Gambling begets millions of neglected addicts

Hooked on Gambling: First of three-part series

Bryant Northern had the world at his fingertips three years ago as a walk-on guard who won a full scholarship at basketball power house University of Louisville.

He dreamed of deadeye jump shots, March Madness, even a pro career.

But the 6-foot-tall Northern also had a hidden problem: an addiction to gambling. Caesars Indiana, the riverboat casino across the Ohio from Louisville, had been his happy hangout since high school - and his scourge. A run of lousy luck found him short of money and in trouble with the police.

Now 23 and a college dropout, Northern was sentenced on March 6 to five years probation for trying to cash stolen checks in Kentucky to pay for his gambling habit. He still faces burglary charges in Indiana, and a possible prison term.

Jim Chesser, 55, a former Louisville bus driver, jokes that he was "born on a card table, raised on a racetrack" because of his parents' love of bingo halls and horses. So when Casino Aztar opened in Evansville, Ind., in 1995, it was only natural he'd be a frequent patron.

"That's when my recreational gambling crossed that invisible line to irresponsible, uncontrolled, compulsive gambling," Chesser said.

The dependency got so bad, he recalled, that he once stole $50 from his 16-year-old stepdaughter and blamed it on his 14-year-old stepson.

"When we're gambling, we will lie, we will cheat, we will steal from everybody," he said. "It will take you places you never thought you would go" - places that caused him to quit cold turkey eight years ago to save his fourth marriage.

Bryant Northern and Jim Chesser do not stand alone. Their stories are commonplace in a nation where legal gambling has spread from just three states 25 years ago to every state in the union, save Utah and Hawaii, as an engine of economic development.

The promise of easy, new money to create jobs, build schools, pay teachers, pave roads and finance other public services has triggered an explosion of casinos, racinos - race tracks with slot machines - and lottery games. The gambling industry has quickly become one of the biggest, and politically most powerful, special interests in the country.

There's no doubt America is sold on gambling, with a payoff of $20.9 billion per year to state governments. What's been overlooked in a nation of high rollers is the unintended human cost: the large and growing class of people addicted to gambling and whose lives often end up in ruin.

They are called pathological gamblers and critics of gambling say they get little attention or treatment because government and the gambling industry depend on habitual players to drive revenue.

"I don't think it is conspiratorial in nature," said state Sen. Susan C. Tucker, a Massachusetts Democrat who opposes a plan for racinos in her state. "It's more that most government leaders understand the truth and simply close their eyes and look away. As for the gambling industry, it is in its self-interest to keep up the gambling."

An indepth study by CNHI News Service into the cost, causes and consequences of problem gambling and what's being done about it determined that:

-- Legal gambling in the United States is a $135.9 billion per year business, based on revenue figures provided by the states that allow it. That's more than double the combined revenues of $50 billion annually from box office movies, recorded music, spectator sports, and live entertainment. And it does not include online betting, which is in legal limbo.